The Rendezvous
by alexoiknine
Summary: #57: The team has rounded up and met back at their home base, and the call from Ondrean finally arrives for them to find they're not exactly at the top of Andalite or human culture at the moment. Still, they need to try to meet Ondrean and move on.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

I was in the fight of my life. Narrowly missing twisted turns that would result in our deaths. Blowing asteroids or meteors - or whatever they – milliseconds before flying through where they had been. The enemy was on me, and the enemy was fast. Firing at me with their Dracon beams, keeping me in their line of sight. Not that 'line of sight' was much of a concern in the middle of space. I mean, we could all definitely see each other out here.

I wasn't exactly sure about how we were going to get out of this.

There were just too many of them. It was like a team of shepherd dogs with one sheep. Or a goat or something. Whatever those dogs chase.

I was using every trick in the book against them, but I was still taking shots to the ship. There wasn't a large margin for damage anymore. It was fortune mostly keeping everything functional, as the system showed. I was minutes away from being out of fuel, less than half an hour away from losing life support, a shot or two from losing gravity functions, and a plethora of other things waiting to go wrong at the next shot.

The ship was majorly screwed, even if we managed to get out of this mess.

"We're like the swiss cheese of spaceships," I grunted. My whole body shifted over as I leaned into the shots I was making, my eyes glued to the screen in front of me. Which didn't actually change anything about where or how much I was shooting or where I was shooting, but I couldn't really help it. I was jazzed. The fight was on. And was I going make it out? I had no idea.

Up. Down. Left. Right. Around and to the side. Spins, stops, feins, flips. Everything in my book – which was a lot, as I'd been handling controls much like these for what was probably many months now. I couldn't get out of regular space into Z-Space with the ship as it was now, so I didn't have much to lose them on. I couldn't even try cloaking – I'd lost the ship's ability to do that minutes ago. To be honest, it hadn't helped much with these folks.

We were losing. Dangerously low on resources and the ability to shield ourselves from attack by those pursuing us. The computers were showing extensive damage and dwindling resources to run with – soon we wouldn't be able to go to Max Burn. Tobias gripped at the countertop, his bluish fingertips very noticeably blanched from the tightness of his own hold. He could have been gripping to a cliff for dear life. He was practically sweating.

And Andalites don't sweat quite as obviously as humans do with their fur, so 'practically' sweating was saying something.

‹There! There! Shoot now!› Tobias cried. His tail twitched, raised a few notches with anticipation as though something was almost – but not quite - in striking distance. His eyes were thrust forward, glued to our screen.

ZOOM. The sound of everything inside rushing as I made it in the nick of time. Still, the enemies were just behind me. And I could see more ahead.

I was surrounded. And with our one ship? It wasn't looking good – we were in a critical point of kill-or-be-killed. We didn't have anything to kill _with_ at this point.

"Well Tobias, I don't think this is going to end well," I muttered. I grabbed the weapon controls. Fired on the lead enemy spacecraft. In return, a blow on my own.

But I wasn't giving up without a fight.

‹No! Go _there._›

"Hang on, hang on, _hang on._ I'm working on it!"

I swiveled and re-aimed my weapons, paying close attention to the crosshairs on the screen. The taste of tension was in the air. Tobias leaned forward, training all four of his eyes on the screen. I took a breath. Fired.

_Just this one shot_, I pleaded. And fired.

TSEWWWW!

It was beautiful. It lanced forward straight toward the main ship. If I took it down, at least that would be something. The mission wouldn't be an _entire _failure – there would be some accomplishment, however remote. Progress for the person after me.

But before my shot hit, there was a shot from behind me! It struck, making an effective final blow that would destroy us entirely. Alarms began going off. Noise was everywhere, hitting me uncomprehendingly. Tobias' tail drooped, his stalk eyes relaxing. It was all over. We were immobilized. Worse than immobilized. And on the screen, flashing to tell me that awful information I was already aware of – taunting me with a pair of all-too common words since I had begun:

GAME OVER.

Tobias chuckled, silent laughter in my head. I threw back the controller and rolled back into my chair. It was so nice, after so long, to have regular chairs. I was very pleased.

‹Should we try again?›

"Nah. I'm pretty bored."

‹You're _always_ bored.›

"I'm _really_ bored."

I looked outside a display that showed us in the vast regions of space.

Yes, that's right. Space. We – the other Animorphs and I – were all in space. Along with some other people, but that's a long story. I'd go over all the gruesome details, but to be honest if you're not aware of that you probably should consider jumping back a few stories. And if you don't know the term 'Animorphs' I recommend dropping these details _right now_ and going back a few stories. Like the first one.

Trust me. This one will be here later.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

My name is Marco.

I'm magnificent. Zaphod's got nothing on me, and at one point I was 'The most famous person on Earth Ever.' Brave – no, scratch that, _courageous_. Heroic. Funny. Cute. Smart. I'm like all the best science fiction characters in the universe rolled into one. I had been probably the most sucessful Animorphs after the end of the Yeerk invasion on Earth. Of course, I had given up my pass to fame on Earth what felt like a long time ago – the martyr for my friends. One friend, off to rescue another, and bringing everyone that made sense to bring along.

Had I mentioned how loyal I am?

We had done two rescue missions so far on our mission mostly set around saving Ax. Unfortunately, we'd done a lot of other destruction, as well. People have died, since we started. We've lost track of time. Been at a loss about the enemy – who we're worried about or how to deal with it. Even worse, we'd yet to come out of a single mission with the same spaceship, having already burned through _The Rachel _and _The Researcher. _It was like James Bond going through cars. But I hoped we could hang on to this one.

The_ Estrella _was really nice.

This ship had been the prototype for a human spacecraft, compared to our last two ships which had been aimed for the Yeerk or Andalite scientist audiences. This ship had _bling, _by human standards. It had videogames. It had movies. It had books downloaded onto things you could read from little pads that looked exactly like paper – 'eBooks' was what the name seemed to be. Not to mention _real _food. The _Estrella_ was a compilation of entertainment and practicality for your average human on board. Plus, it had some necessary things for Andalites, too, having been a co-production with the intention of having a few Andalites on board.

It was still a bit understaffed, but not unreasonably so anymore. We couldn't go losing people without significant problems for ourselves personally, but we could take some downtime as we were. Jake, Ax, Tobias, Leah and I had saved a few kids from this planet, the Cryhalis, which made the downtime possible. We couldn't count on that permanently – we were actually heading back to an outpost to possibly meet with Ondrean to get more willing hands on deck. I wasn't quite sure what the story was with these kids having the _Estrella_, or at least the details, but Jake had decided it wouldn't be right to keep them out here, and I more or less agreed.

To be honest, we were still dealing with the problem of the last stranger we'd picked up: Leah had been subjected to some drug on the Cryhali planet while we had been working to rescue this new group. And she was not exactly recuperating that well. And honestly, it was unlikely that Ondrean – our 'agent' of the human and Andalite worlds – would be unable to find adult replacements willing to take on that type of responsibility with us.

Just one of the more uncomfortable benefits of fame.

Anyway, at the moment, Tobias and I were the ones taking a break. It hadn't really been normal for us to be placed together before the last mission, but Jake had been avoiding me since the Cryhali planet. He was probably feeling guilty, even though he hadn't really done anything wrong.

He'd been avoiding Tobias far longer than me. But in avoiding the two of us, it had been inevitable we would have been around each other a bit more than Tobias and I were comfortable with. On the other hand, it was a great chance for me to keep an eye on Tobias, at least for a little while. I'd been needing some time to figure out what was going on with everyone else. Tobias, especially.

Tobias was a _nothlit_ again. And those of us that knew him? We worried. Not that anyone would ever say anything.

But I couldn't get a sense of Tobias as being anything other than regular Tobias. If he had more negative thoughts than normal on the matter? He was keeping them to himself. And I figured he probably would let everyone know how he felt at some point. Whenever he felt comfortable enough to do so. Or maybe he was happy. He had been doing things he couldn't do as a hawk without morphing frequently. His Andalite body was younger, stronger, more able than the hawk body he'd acquired in its mid-life and then lived several years in. He was doing things like sketching during some of his free time, and joining me in the video games right now: _Yeerk Slayers_. He wasn't _happy_, but that had never really been normal for Tobias anyway, and he didn't seem too frustrated. I was less concerned with seeing him in ways that matched with the stuff he'd always done, compared to any drastically negative or positive personality change.

Maybe these things were more appealing away from people for Tobias. On Earth, Tobias had been bullied. Here, things were pretty simplified. We worked unless it was our sleep period, or our break periods. We saw the same people day-in and day-out. Everyone was a teammate, even those we didn't actually like. There wasn't exactly a huge, complicated world inside the _Estrella. _And maybe that was good enough. Or, on the other hand, maybe it was just a denial thing so far.

Maybe it was just easy to forget about being a hawk in a place where you couldn't _really_ be a hawk. Maybe that wouldn't come up again as an issue until the day we were back on Earth, assuming that day ever came. He wasn't going to go flying around the _Estrella. _So it was possible that the lack of emotion tied to that thought simply resulted from a lack of things to do in space in a hawk body.

If he was waiting until he got back to Earth to worry about it, there was a good possibility it would never even matter.

But Tobias didn't say anything. So I didn't say anything.

All of this made this particular downtime a bit awkward for me. Except that I was pretty sure, wherever Tobias was, that he wasn't that high-risk.

Tobias had gone off to read while I was off thinking to myself. I probably looked like ridiculously conspicuous, but I had a lot to think about. Lately I would sometimes just sit back on the couch and _worry_. Not just _worry_, but _planning_ types of worry. _Analytical_ types of worry. I had three or four types of worry going through me at any given time, and it didn't show, but I had a lot of thinking to do in general about how thing swere running.

We had to take on a few issues. The issues of the rescued kids. The issue of if – or how – we would keep the _Estrella_ if we were going to focus on the apparent issue of The One and the _Kelbrid._ Leah – none of us were looking forward to that one.

Think, think, think.

I looked around what we had taken to calling the 'Rec Room' even though it had some fancy name that basically designated it for the same tasks. I needed something to do. There were options, and I just needed to pick something and take my mind off of things I wasn't supposed to think about at the moment. I looked. Besides game concoles, movies, books... I searched, perusing the room.

It really did have a lot of options. I could play any game I wanted. Read any book. Watch any movie, or TV show. And those things all seemed like great ideas – I could stick on _The Simpsons_ and watch hours of episodes before it was time for the lights to go out. I could try my hand at sketching, like Tobias, if I really cared to. I could do so many things. It's just they were all things 'in the _Estrella_, and that was getting a bit old. No one had ever really trained me – or anyone here that was human – for being out in space for months at a time. Jaela and Lahsailat hadn't been trained for indefinite time _literally_ in the middle of nowhere, and most of what Ax had suggested to me was exactly what I would have done anyway.

"Stay busy." Like I hadn't already figured I should do that. But at first I had mostly stuck to games and videos, things I had enjoyed on Earth. They were still fun. But they weren't the way to occupy _all_ of my free time – I was getting bored. But what was _a_ thing, or _my_ thing? One of them, anyway.

But what I settled on, in the end, was a helmet device. It was the _Virtual Teaching Unit_, or the VTU. The item worked to teach a great variety of subjects through the use of virtual reality – and we're talking pretty good, sophisticated virtual reality. A great example of Andalite and human minds working together – our entertainment systems had made quite a few leaps since 2001. Most of the convenience of a holodeck, without most of the cost, the space... And hopefully less technical difficulties. The guide, full of suggestions, was pretty helpful – seeing as I really had no idea what I wanted to do.

I could learn languages. Martial arts and various forms of self defense. Dancing – even partnered dancing, if I knew someone else willing that had a helmet within five feet. I grinned, and saved that bit of information to tease Jake sometime when he was stressing out beyond the necessary, but kept looking. History – different types, as if I really cared about history in any form. Various social sciences and subfields. Sciences I hadn't heard of. Games.

I was debating between karate and trying to learn more Spanish – both things I probably could have had a lot more fun doing on Earth with the money to learn wherever I wanted. But then Jessie poked in, Leah in tow. It probably had been only her first or second time out since we had gotten out here – and Jessie had mostly had to stay with her, to make sure she wasn't, well, dangerous. Between the withdrawal phase with physical symptoms that were practically deadly on their own – and that had been an ugly phase – and now? It was a pretty unfortunate state of affairs.

"Let's find something to do," Jessie was saying. I hesitated over selecting an option for the VTU, listening in on the conversation. Decided instead to go to 'view' mode – the mode made for the VTUs so a person could pause and deal with people around them between whatever they were doing. "I'm sure there's something."

"There's nothing."

"Drawing is something."

"I don't wanna draw."

"Television is something."

"No."

I noticed Tobias had paused in his sketching, giving his own sideways glances. It was a bit like watching an overgrown toddler, even knowing the background story was more complicated than someone refusing for the sake of refusing. Jessie was trying to work with her, and she wouldn't – or couldn't – comply.

"Look around," Jessie was down to pleading with Leah. I felt pretty bad for her. Leah looked a bit ashamed, and began to shuffle around, perusing the items in the room. Passing the digital equivalents of books, board games, sketch pads and various other crafts.

It wasn't just like she was bored, it was as though she could never be anything except bored again. That nothing in life, except the drugs she had been introduced to, would ever matter. Everyone was familiar with vices on the _Estrella. _But what Leah had was more of a noose.

Slowly, Leah had walked up to me. "Marco? What's that on your head?"

"It's a virtual reality helmet."

"Can I use it?"

I gestured toward a back wall, where there were four others. Leah shuffled back, placing one over her head. Jessie took the chance to fall back onto the couch, and flip on some channels. Leah was now busy. Jessie could give her a few feet. And if Leah was going to avoid being back on Earth, she needed to find a way to cope with the things that had happened to her.

For a while, much like myself, there was no discernible display of Leah using the VTU – it begins with thoughts, and used audio or not pending on the things a person was doing. But at random, I heard Leah say something along the lines of, "Ani bi ha mehoneet."

So she'd given something or other a shot. I wasn't sure what, but it was something.

A bit pleased with what I _had_ managed to learn in such a short period of time, I grinned, and selected the karate option on my own VTU.

Just because it was my day off hadn't meant I hadn't done anything useful, anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"Hey, Marco."

"Yes Jake?"

He grinned a little at my formality. It was a day later, and we were assigned together at the bridge, along with Lahsailat and Sam. There hadn't been any need to watch who was at what shift lately, since Leah had been unable to leave the medical room for any reason other than short trips to the recreation room. Still, we had normally kept it to 'us' – Jake, Ax, Tobias and I – or 'them' so that everyone was with people they already had an established relationship with. The exception was normally Kat, the 'captain' of the kid team we rescued. Today, though, Lahsailat was an Andalite, and Sam was, well, Sam. Honestly, I didn't know much about her except she wore cargos, oversized tees and a jacket. She was nice – but mostly kept to herself.

Normally, we would have tried to keep at least six people at the bridge between navigation, communication, weaponry, and a few other fairly important tasks. He was being a bit lax, by having Lasailat cover two – navigation and our current position between Z-Space and regular space. Communications was being ignored entirely unless a call actually came in. So it was pretty clear: Jake hadn't wanted to talk to anyone else we closer to the situation.

"I take it you had a good day off?"

I shrugged. "Win some, lose some. I think an entire day is really hard to manage when not actually on Earth, but I was glad to sleep in."

He grinned, and then turned back to keeping an eye on bridge systems. Back some other time, years ago, we probably would have had to share weapon control. We would have been randomly shooting off into space. It hadn't been very often as Earth-bound guerilla warriors, but there had been times.

In the meantime, I waited for him to talk about whatever he had wanted to talk about. Jake would say something, when he'd decided to. Fiddling with the controls and practicing my aim at random points in the distance, I waited.

"So."

"We've already been there, Jake."

"I know." He signed, and rubbed his head. "Can you give me an update on anything? Any interesting news outside of the bridge?"

"Well, Jake, I don't know," I pretended to be mulling it over, cracking my knuckles. That wasn't something I ever would have done as a kid – my mom had _hated_ it when people popped their joints. But I'd found it a bit soothing out here, in space. We'd all developed our little motions for the times we were getting bored, or anxious. Jake, likewise, swept one hand through his hair.

Lahsailat and Sam, true to the form, kept to themselves.

"You could, you know, take off a day yourself. Talk to people, Jake. Play some videogames."

He gave me a look. "I will, but that's not what I'm asking for right now. People act more normal around you."

I snorted. He really thought anyone here wouldn't realize that I'd talk to him as much as necessary? Still, at least he was being honest about the sneakier, small-time missions over just going around and interviewing people himself.

It sounded like a case for honesty.

"I didn't learn too much," I admitted, "At least, not compared to what other people would have seen in the same circumstance. I didn't go around talking to people, I just observed."

"Tobias..."

"Tobias honestly seems... Fine." I shrugged. "He's apparently coping, Jake. We played videogames, and he drew and did stuff we more or less would have expected of him any time he was human."

Jake gave me a more suspicious look this time, one eyebrow raised.

"What? You asked. Tobias didn't give me any reason to worry."

"He's not happy. He can't fly."

"Tobias is never happy, Jake. Not really. And he wouldn't have been able to fly as a hawk in a spaceship, anyway. I'm not saying he'll never have a problem with what's happened, but I think, you know, we'll worry about it when we hit that road. And if he spends enough time as an Andalite, who knows, it might not be that big of a problem." I shrugged. "He doesn't have to kill to eat anymore, and there are things he geinuinely used to enjoy that he can do again regularly again, with his hands. I say we give that some time at face value."

Jake nodded, more satisfied at that than my initial response. I guessed he had been needing more of that detail to feel reassured that I had actually found out something worthwhile to him.

"Did you see Leah?"

"Yeah." I grinned. "And I didn't even see her at the medical bay. She was in the recreation room. I mean, not by herself, but with Jessie"

Jake perked up at that. Leah had basically been confined to quarters since we left. "Oh, really? Jessie never told me she was going to be bringing Leah out. And?"

"Like Tobias: I'd give it time."

"Marco, I'm not worried about Tobias in any way. Tobias has been with us since the beginning; I know what I'm worried about. Leah has drug dependency, and I don't know all its details."

I messed with the weapons control unit a bit, just to give me a small distraction from the rest of our conversation. "You're trying to get me to say 'she's a danger to all of us, get her off the ship as soon as we have our meeting with Ondrean'?"

Jake shook his head, and looked out. "No, Marco. I'm pretty sure we have to do that anyway. Because of what I've already said, but also because we have to find out what's going on with the _Kelbrid_, what's going on with _The One_. We need someone out there that was part of the Blade ship's crew to be on Earth. Leah could use the medical attention and human interaction. It works."

"Mmmmhmm."

"You disagree?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I think she was infested a long time and didn't have control of her life. Then she loses control of her life again. We don't control other peoples' lives or tell them what to do. Why start now?"

"Taking away one option does not equate controlling a person's life, Marco."

I shrugged. "It's not that different. I think before shoving her off we could afford to give her a chance to recover a bit more. I mean, theoretically the drugs should have killed her, and she's managed to not die in the past few weeks. I don't really see the point in rushing – we can decide that closer to the meeting point. Shouldn't we be more worried about why the Blade Ship ignored us when we were escaping the planet?"

Jake gave me a look. "Believe me, I have been. It's part of why we're still out here. I've been having basically all the Andalites check our systems and other things that might indicate any type of activity that might be a trace, or bug, or virus."

"Good call."

"Yeah, I'm not completely oblivious." He sighed. "Still, they haven't found anything. If it's here... It's hiding well. Still, they had every opportunity. Something's up."

"Well, I'm sure we'll figure it out."

He nodded, unsmiling, and turned back to what he was doing. We still had a few hours left before the next rotation, and Jake and I probably weren't going to come up with ideas better than three Andalites – especially as they had the help of a few people that were more technologically inclined than I. Plenty of time to stew and mull over the topic of the _Kelbrid_, _The One_, and the _Blade Ship_.

"So..." I tried to turn the subject more to our latest mission. "What is the word with Ondrean? Are we meeting up with him soon?"

He grinned at me. "Actually, we made contact with him while you were enjoying your downtime. He wants us to make a stop – I was thinking we'd go by that planet with the lobsters – before trying to make further contact."

"Oh, _no_, you didn't just say that. Jake, please tell me we're not waiting _longer_ before meeting Ondrean – it'll take up to weeks to get to him from that point! A lot less time compared to just going through Z-Space like we are now."

"Calm down. When I told him Ax and everyone else hadn't found anything, I managed to calm him down a bit. Grief, look at the navigation yourself. We're not that far from the outpost now."

I glanced. He was right: We were actually almost at the point where we'd have to leave Z-Space or potentially overshoot.

He gave me an uncertain smile. "I keep talking about Leah and Tobias. What about you, though, Marco? Any plans for when we make contact? You gave up a lot to be here."

I laughed. "Please, Jake. Just imagine when we've saved the world again and I come back from my long sojourn."

He grinned. "You mean when no one remembers your name? That happened before we left."

Jake and I didn't really do 'guy moments' too much anymore, or I might have tossed something at him, maybe a light punch to his shoulder. But in a lot of ways, the situation just made me sad. The Jake I knew couldn't do anything outside of work anymore – it had to be about his team, those in relation to his team, or his enemy. I guessed it had probably been that way longer than I remembered – even before the war with the Yeerks had ended. That's just what had happened to Jake.

And instead of worrying about what that meant for him – that he couldn't seem to do anything functional outside of work – he was worried about Leah, Tobias, and _me_, of all people. I was worried about the opposite – how long this situation could last without Jake becoming a completely ineffective leader. Or worse, delusional.

I would have liked something to take a shot at, right then, just to get my own mind off of things. Understanding people with the intent of fixing them had never been my thing. I didn't know how to fix Jake. But even with a specific enemy, I usually didn't see people zipping around space like an Earth highway.

So instead, I pulled out my mobile game console. "_Yeerks Attack Three: Now With Zombies!" _the game proudly proclaimed. For some reason, this game had always amused me the most when I was bored, even though hundreds and maybe thousands of corny games involving Yeerks had been made at the end of the war, usually with Yeerks as _nothlits_ contributing to the research for Yeerk portrayal. But this game had an extra layer of amusement.

Apparently the designers of this game hadn't thought Yeerks were horrific enough. They had to throw in _zombies_. Right. Still, it was hilarious, it could be fairly complicated, and I gladly settled back into it for now while the space around us was clear.

I had three days before my next long time off period. But Ax was off – technically – at the moment, and for a lot more hours. I decided when I was done with my duties for the day, I would go and chill with him a bit, getting the latest theories about the _Kelbrid_ and the _Blade Ship. _It would give me something to take my mind off of

Heck, I might even get a few two-player games in before sleeping.


End file.
